Dichroic Reflections

cosmogony part II: the positive side

Apparently I'm having a Mardi Gras party this year. Anyone likely to be in the area?

It occurred to me that everything I wrote about yesterday is a negative reaction to someone else's position. That's no way to build a cosmogony, a life, or a set of principles. (Or a political platform, as certain people in this country for whom I would like to vote if only they'd ever be for something ought to realize. But I digress.) And in the spirit of ecumenism, my brethren, I take my text today from the Sermon on the Mount: "By their fruits shall ye know them."

This morning while I was thinking about what I'd written, I was driving to work under a sunrise sky, some of it seen through the canopies of trees along the road. I saw a glint of silver as a jet plane climbed out of the city's airport. And I thought, all of those things are not only beautiful in their own right, but they're even more so if I know a little about them, what makes them that way and what is behind them. The plane flies because the air under its wings exerts more pressure than the faster-moving air on top of it's wings. The unmatchable pinks and peaches of the sunrise, so delicate and ineffable that those color-names seem to crude to describe them, come from unimaginably fast particles emitted by an incredibly hot, incredibly huge blazing furnace, viewed through particles of water vapor so tiny and light that they actually float in air, and what I'm seeing is just a part of a whole rainbow spectrum of colors contained in that light. And the tree - those graceful leaves aren't just pretty. Those delicate leaves make enough food to support the whole living tree, and over time to have built the thick sturdy trunk and branches. And even more, it's part of a whole system that co-evolved into a beautiful and complex codependent web of life that's powered by that same blazing furnace we orbit around, moving unbelievably fast on this whole planet that feels like it's anchored for all time. And out, so far we see them as mere pinpricks, are billions and billions of other infernos, some so vast they make our sun look like a dust most. Others are expanding or collapsing, pulsing, or so ridiculously dense that they contain the mass of our solar system in a body that's smaller across than the distance I drive to work each day. And these bodies are arranged in the most beautiful whorls and spirals, and our attempts to understand all of this complexity, little as we know to date, has let us see the beauty in those spirals, and in crystal patterns as small as the spirals are large, and to comprehend just a tiny bit of the relationships between all of these things......

Well. I get giddy if I think about it too long. And then on top of all that, there is love between people, and the warmth of friendships, the softness of a kitten snuggled against your cheek, the cozy domestic heat of a fire and the opposing coldness on your back beckoning you to adventure, your body and mind and the way they get stronger and smarter to deal with the challenges you give them, and a hundred million other everyday miracles.

There's a common belief that learning more about anything will somehow spoil it, that somehow scientists don't appreciate what's there once they begin to dissect it. I find just the opposite - more knowledge adds a whole new dimension of appreciation in addition to the simple pleasure in a beautiful object. I don't really feel a need to know more about God than that S/He is the spirit within that universe and in this life. I don't need to know if S/He created it or somehow grew within it all. My responsibility to live up to all these good gifts is to learn as much about them as I can, to enable me to appreciate them, if not as much as they deserve, than as much as my little mind can compass, and to try to live so that my life improves the parts of the world I touch or at the very least does as little harm as I can manage.